The Credulity Nexus (5 page)

Blake switched
his cogplus to phone mode and called Rik as soon as he got out the
house and into his car. The network said there was no such netID.
He argued with it for a while, discovering that Rik's netID had
been disconnected just a few hours ago, in London, England.
Glancing at the package on the seat beside him, Blake called Rik's
wives in Heinlein, hoping Brie wouldn't notice the long-distance
call to the Moon on the service bill.

“Carlotta
Sylver 3 Drew, how can I help you?”

The image in
the dashboard display was of a young woman with wild, multicoloured
hair and animated face paint that was sliding through various
autumn hues. The effect, all the rage off-world, was faintly
ridiculous to Blake's eyes – like the dumb-ass family names these
spacers adopted – but there was no denying that the woman was a
beauty.

“Hi, I'm a
friend of Rik's and I'm trying to–”

“Rik! That
worthless, knuckle-dragging piece of space junk! If he ever shows
his vacced-out face around here again, I'm gonna–”

“Rik? Did you
say Rik? Is that you, honey?” Another face appeared in the display,
similarly made up and similarly beautiful. The other Drew sister,
Blake assumed, and Rik's other wife. “Neffy's pining for you,
sweetie. Hey! That's not Rik! Who's this guy?”

“It's OK,
Nephele, I'm dealing with it,” Carlotta said as she nudged her
sister out of the way. “Look, mister, if he owes you money, get in
line. If you want to shoot the bum, take a ticket. Otherwise, it's
nothing to do with us any more.”

“But I
just–”

The line went
dead. Blake stared at the empty display in stunned silence, then
gave a snort of amazement. Whatever had inspired Rik to get
involved with those two – and the beautiful faces and glimpses of
deep cleavage certainly provided clues – Blake could understand why
his friend would want to be a long, long way away. They sure
weren't anything like Maria!

Blake had
known Maria back in the old days, when Rik had been on the force
and they'd all lived in the same neighbourhood. He'd always liked
her. Hell, what was not to like? She was gorgeous, in a
long-limbed, willowy kind of way. She was funny. She was smart. And
she loved Rik to pieces. Loved him too much, maybe. Let herself
hang on too long to a man hell bent on throwing away every good
thing in his life, including her. Rik broke that woman's heart over
and over until she just couldn't stand it any more, packed up,
moved east and filed for divorce. And who could blame her?

That's when
Rik really went to pieces. Within a month of Maria leaving, Rik had
his big row with the Captain and was out on his ear, snooping after
cheating husbands for a living. One of the best cops Blake had ever
known, too. One of the best friends. And now what was going on with
Rik? He was back on Earth – in Europe for Chrissake! – and hiding
out, else why kill his ID?

The thought
that his friend was in trouble gnawed at him. He owed a lot to Rik.
He owed him his life. If Rik hadn't had his back, that day in
Potrero... Brie didn’t understand that kind of debt.

But what could
he do? He should hang on to the package and wait for Rik to get in
touch. He looked at the silver box on the seat beside him. This was
serious shit. Biohazard could mean anything, but it sure didn't
mean anything good. He couldn't keep the stuff at home, not around
Brie. He couldn't keep it at the station. He could just put it in a
locker at the bus depot or something, but what if it was stolen?
What if there was some freak accident? A quake, maybe? A public
place like that...

He was almost
at the station. He had to stop agonising about it and do
something.

“Pull over,”
he told the car, and it started looking for a parking spot.

Brie was
right, of course. He should turn it in. But Brie didn't understand
that he couldn't let Rik down. Rik would never have sent it if it
wasn't important. And, with Rik lying low, maybe it was life and
death for him. But he had to do something with the damned
stuff.

The car came
to a halt and he looked out through the windscreen, searching for
inspiration. And there it was, a big blue and white Post Office
sign. He knew Maria's address. He could send it to her. She lived
alone, as far as Blake knew. And if Rik came looking for his
package, he could send him on to see Maria.

Maybe it would
be just what they needed to start talking again. Kill two birds
with one stone. Whatever kind of hole Rik was in, Blake was sure
his friend would benefit from seeing Maria again. He'd be doing
both of them a favour, and the package had already survived a trip
all the way from England. He'd wrap it up good in that new
shock-absorbent wrap they sell. It would only be in transit for a
few hours. Not a big risk at all.

Pleased with
himself, he picked up the package and set off for the Post
Office.

Rik caught the
underground at East Ham station and had to change twice before he
got onto the Piccadilly Line to Heathrow Airport. At East Ham the
line was above ground, and he could watch the shabby suburbs rattle
by as he passed one run-down little Victorian station after
another. But after just a handful of stops, the line plunged
steeply downwards into the black belly of the great city. From that
point on, all he could do was watch his reflection in the window,
eating the barely-palatable sandwiches he'd bought on his way to
the station, and count off the stops to his next change.

And go slowly
crazy with boredom.

When Heathrow
tube station finally appeared, he almost knocked over a couple of
backpacking Aussie kids in his eagerness to get off the train. If
there was one thing he was starting to regret about this job, it
was the travelling! The thought of another four hours on a hopper
to LA, and then another hop to Mexico, and then twelve more hours
climbing the so-called high-speed Guadalajara Spacebridge, had him
knotted up and ready to scream.

“Think about
the money,” he told himself. “Keep thinking about the goddamn
money.”

The hopper
pads were way over the far side of the international terminals.
They'd tacked the pads on forty years before, when sub-orbital
flight was new and shiny. In all that time, they hadn't got round
to rebuilding the airport, even though flight by any other means
was now as rare as rainforest.

Rik grumbled
to himself about it all the way across the airport. At least, he
promised himself, he'd be able to get a shower and pick up some
clean clothes when he got to Blake's house. The luggage he arrived
on Earth with was still in Berlin, and he didn't expect to see it
again. He'd had to dump his gun in a litter bin back in East Ham.
Without his identity as a PLEO and the license that went with it,
he'd be stopped trying to carry a weapon into the airport. Until he
reached LA, then, he was relying on body odour and a bad attitude
to keep the bad guys away.

He bought a
coffee and a disposable reader and flopped into a hard plastic seat
in the departure lounge. He downloaded a novel from the airport net
and tried to read it. Big displays, spaced around the lounge, were
showing non-stop news and entertainment shows. They blared out a
constant, manic jabber that made it impossible to concentrate or
relax, but which was nevertheless unintelligible.

Rik ground his
teeth and switched to audio. The reader began speaking the book
into his aural implants through his cogplus. It wasn't a great
success; the dodgy cogplus and the cheap reader couldn't quite
communicate properly, and between them they managed to lose several
words in every paragraph. It created some interesting sentences and
forced an unnatural level of concentration. So much, in fact, that
Rik didn't notice the young man standing beside him until he felt a
touch on his shoulder.

Immediately
Rik was on his feet, his hand reaching for his absent weapon.

“Excuse me,”
the man said in a suave English accent. “I didn't mean to startle
you. My name is Rajan Shah. I'm with the security services.” He
didn't show a badge or exchange any ID. Rik knew full well that
'security services' didn't mean the airport rent-a-cops. It almost
certainly meant MI5, and that could only mean trouble.

“I'm sorry,”
Rik said, stalling. “I don't understand.”

The young man
smiled politely. "I'm sure you do, Mr. Drew." He stepped back a
pace and indicated the route back towards the main buildings. “We'd
just like to ask you a few questions.”

Rik did a
quick scan of the area. There was a tough-looking guy waiting along
the route Shah wanted him to go. There were also at least two
others standing back and trying to look inconspicuous. He looked
wistfully at the big windows that opened out onto the hopper pads
and the tall, white VTOL aircraft standing outside like monuments
to the Space Age. He'd probably save the spooks the job and kill
himself if he tried jumping through those great slabs of glass.

He turned back
to the young man beside him. Shah was a slender man, tall and
rather elegant. But you could never tell, these days, what kind of
cybernetic or genetic augmentations a man had. Accepting that they
had him in a corner, Rik nodded his acquiescence and let Shah lead
him away.

They had
barely gone two paces when there was a scream from within the
lounge. Everyone turned to look at the screamer, then at the window
she was pointing at.

A black female
figure hung upside-down outside the window, poised like a diver in
mid air. In a breathless moment as everyone gaped, the woman drew
back her fist and punched the glass. The huge pane exploded into a
million pieces, and the woman swung in through the curtain of
shards, scattering them over the panicking crowd.

“You're going
to need your gun,” Rik growled at Shah, who was staring,
mesmerised, at the upload. “She's after me.”

The upload
turned a neat, twisting somersault and landed on her feet, facing
Rik. Glass rained down all around her like a sudden spring rain. It
bounced harmlessly off her hairless, artificial body. Her skin,
lips and fingernails were as black as soot. Her eyes gleamed like
black marbles behind black eyelids. Even the nine millimetre
automatic in her hand was black. It was impossible to read her
expression. All Rik saw in that pretty face was focus and
intent.

Shah was in
motion at last, shouting to his troops, shouting at the crowd. He
pushed past Rik to stand between him and the upload, gun in
hand.

The woman was
perfectly still, holding the position she had landed in, balanced
on her toes as if ready to dance. Only her head moved as she
glanced around the room, picking out Shah's men, so obvious now as
they converged on her.

When
she moved, so did Rik.

Gunfire
erupted all around. The upload was firing at Shah's men, scattering
terrified travellers as she raced to and fro at superhuman speeds.
The MI5 agents were firing back at her, dodging around the
screaming, yelling people, trying to get a clear shot.

Rik kept low
and ran for the boarding gate. He was almost there when a plastic
chair beside him twanged like a rubber band as a bullet went
through it. He threw himself sideways and turned to see the upload
clinging to the ceiling, tracking him with her gun. Bullets smashed
into the plaster panels around her. One hit her in the thigh. She
twitched but ignored it; a small grey patch on her perfect, ebony
skin was the only mark it left on her.

An MI5 agent
threw himself down on one knee beside Rik, covering the upload with
a snub-nosed sub-machine gun. It didn't make Rik feel the slightest
bit safer.

The woman
dropped to the ground, landing on her feet like a big, black cat.
She fired two shots into Rik's would-be protector before she leapt
aside to avoid a storm of gun-fire. The agent slumped to the
ground, blood pouring from two chest-wounds. Rik didn't waste time
checking if he was alive. He grabbed the man's gun and set off for
the boarding gate again.

This time he
made it, slamming through the double doors and into a long, curving
corridor. At the end would be the connecting walkway to the
aircraft and, since the hopper hadn't arrived yet, a long drop to
the landing pad below. Rik hadn't quite worked out what he was
going to do about that. His only thought had been to get out of
that slaughter-house by the fastest route.

The corridor
was suspended high in the air, and it shook and boomed as Rik raced
along it, but not so much that he didn't hear the sound of pursuit
when it came.

He turned a
corner, and there was the walkway just metres away, the escape he'd
been desperate for blocked by a solid door. He crashed into it, but
it didn't yield. He could hear the upload's light footfalls just
around the corner. With a yell of frustration he turned and fell to
one knee, aiming his weapon back along the corridor.

Above and
around him, he realised, the walls were a thin, flexible fabric on
a concertinaed framework. If he could rip a hole in it and squeeze
between the metal hoops of the frame, he could get outside. But
there was no time. The upload was here.

As soon as she
saw him, she slowed from a dead run to a slow walk. She moved with
an athletic grace, the human mind inside her android body imbuing
her movements with a disturbingly feminine sensuality.

“Turn around
and leave, or I shoot,” Rik said, as calmly as he could. He didn't
know much about these nanite bodies, but he knew they were almost
invulnerable. Any damage was almost instantly repaired as the
surrounding nanites flowed in to fix it up, restructuring and
reprogramming themselves in real time. He recalled there was one
weakness though.

“Give yourself
up, Rik,” the woman said. Her voice was as slinky as the rest of
her, smooth and rich, with no sign of stress or emotion. “I don't
need to hurt you. All I want is the box you took from GeneWerken.
I'll get you out of here and then you can tell me where it is.”